Interview: Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal (Guns N’ Roses)

We love it when we get to talk to musicians directly and interview them without third parties involved, and such was the case with Mr. Thal.

We’re proud of all the interviews we’ve done on this site but few interviewees really played along when it came to our unique way of asking questions. Remember Axe?

But Bumblefoot gets this type of humor and he embraces it, this is why this is my favorite Dose Of Metal interview so far.

So if you want to know what a typical day in the life of Bumblefoot is like, what his stage name would have been if his wife wasn’t a veterinarian, what he thinks should happen to us or how many necks a proper guitar should have, make the jump…

Metal goes acoustic 2

Some of you regular readers may remember a week or so back I wrote a post called Metal goes acoustic. You should also remember that it was fucking awesome.

Now, because everything good comes in twos (my testicles, Katy Perry’s boobs, and so on), I’m back with part two. What does part two involve? Well, once again it’s a Youtube user called broadcast2k9 and it’s another Machine Head song that has been covered acoustically. This time, the song is A Farewell to Arms taken from The Blackening album. The song is over 10 minutes long, so I hope you can take a 10 minute break from Facebook or Porn or whatever you’re doing to check out this great cover. You won’t regret it.

Devin Townsend releases release date

Well, I got some good news and bad news.

The bad news involved being at a grocery store earlier today. I went into the “10 items or less” lane and this elderly lady was in front of me. For some strange reason, I decided to count the groceries in her cart and she had 11!  I politely asked her to leave the line or take one item out because clearly she was breaking rules. She refused to, explaining to me having an extra item wasn’t a big deal! This frustrated me!  I know it sounds like I’m pulling a Larry David, but this old bag needed to go into any other line besides the “10 items or less” one!  Rules are NOT meant to be broken!

The good news, however,  is Devin Towsend has spoken over Twitter and has finally set a release date for his upcoming new albums ‘Ghost‘ and ‘Deconstruction‘.

Looks like the release date for Deconstruction and Ghost is June 20. Info on special presale stuff soon. Thanks for the support!!!

Hurray for Devin Townsend! F U to the granny!

In Flames are happy to be on Century Media

Swedish metallers In Flames recently signed to Century Media records. Lead vocalist, Anders Fridén seems rather excited.

“This is number 10… Album number 10! That we even made it this far, that is amazing. Then, to deliver the album of our career that is something else… It’s fast, slow, heavy and mellow. It’s happy, sad, angry and calm. Sounds Of A Playground Fading is everything we ever done on crack (it’s a metaphor boys and girls), it’s cask strength whisky when it’s THAT perfect moment. Use and abuse!!!!!   By the way, we are happy to be in bed with Century Media. They know the business, we know the music, a perfect match. What can possibly go wrong… ha, ha, ha!!!!!!” – Anders Fridén.

Album number 10, eh?  Well, they have come a long way.  Helped pioneer the Melodic Death Metal genre, trading singers with Dark Tranquility in the early 90s, releasing a masterpiece in 1996,  failing to try and sound like Korn years later and continuing to sell a lot of albums for a Metal band. Metal elitists can trash and call them sellouts all they want, but In Flames have accomplished quite a bit over the years.

Make the jump to see when ‘Sounds Of A Playground Fading‘ will be released in your country.

Tuesday Trivia: A curse that went from theater to metal

Have you ever heard of The Scottish Play? It’s a name for William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Why would anyone want to call it the Scottish Play instead of Macbeth? Well, the reason is as simple as interesting: according to a theatrical superstition, called the Scottish Curse, speaking the name Macbeth inside a theater will cause disaster. Actors got hurt and even killed and people attributed that to the curse.

What does that have to do with metal? Well, there’s a German band called Macbeth (there are actually two German bands called Macbeth but I’m talking about the Heavy Metal band, not the Power Metal band) and when you’re reading the band’s biography, it just seems like the poor guys are cursed.

The band was formed in East Germany in 1985. They were one of the first metal bands from the GDR (German Democratic Republic) and the authorities weren’t fans of the band, to put it nicely. At a concert in 1986, the band wasn’t allowed to play an encore. Afterwards the authorities forbade the band to ever play again, annulled the band’s tour bus license and terminated the band’s rehearsal room lease contract. Why? Well, metal is evil and all that jazz.

So you could call that bad luck, as probably multiple bands from the GDR had to go through that but it doesn’t stop there. The band illegally reunited several times after that and in the fall of 1989, shortly after singer Detlev Wittenburg was released from jail (for reasons unrelated to the band), they played two farewell concerts. Wittenburg commited suicide by hanging in December of 1989 and Macbeth broke up. They reunited in 1993 to play a couple of gigs, just to split-up again after the band’s drummer Rico Sauermann commited suicide by jumping from a house to his death.

You be the judge if you can attribute that to a curse or simply extremely bad luck. I for one don’t believe in curses, unless you consider Linkin Park a curse, but I can’t help but be fascinated by that coincidence.

Macbeth finally reunited in 2004 and released two albums since. Make the jump for a video of ‘Das Boot,’ a song off their latest release ‘Gotteskrieger.’